An exit poll of Herbert (that is, Townsville), Qld, apparently shows a three point swing to the ALP. Wouldn't have thought exit polls of individual constituencies are worth much, but news is news.

That's odd, isn't Townsville a Liberal leaning area?

It's regional Queensland, so it's difficult to categorise. The Liberal incumbent (who's retiring) narrowly hung on last time, but it was Labor throughout the Hawke-Keating years. Boundary changes give it a notional ALP lead of about three votes or something.

But, as I said, I'm not sure if such surveys of individual constituencies are worth a lot.

Watching the TV coverage, they've mentioned three different exit polls of specific constituencies, two that showed unrealistically large swings to Labor, and one that showed an unrealistically large swing to the Coalition. None of the pundits believe the constituency exit polls.

Meanwhile, on Channel Ten, they mentioned that the national exit poll they did showed Labor winning 52%-48%, but that, oddly, the Coalition was slightly ahead in the actual swing races.

Interesting pattern now well-established in NSW; Sydney is looking grim for Labor, the rest of the state not so much. Two rural electorates (Eden-Monaro and Page) look to have been held, yet 'safe' Banks is on a knife edge...

If I'm shown as having been active here recently it's either because I've been using the gallery, because I've been using the search engine looking up something from way back, or because I've been reading the most excellent UK by-elections thread again.